The Other Side of Sports TOO – Eddie on the Road

By Eddie Michels on August 27, 2022

Well fans this past June 1^st was the worst day of my life when my bride Karen passed away because of brain cancer. I still can’t get over it as it is tearing me apart.

Now up until August 13^th friend and foe alike had been telling me to take a trip I had been talking about for years, the one that would take me to the last five states in the US I had yet to visit. Well on August 14^th I did leave Clearwater and went to visit Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and N. Dakota.

Well, when I left driving, I was behind the wheel of my late wife’s 2021 Jeep Compass and by the time I returned to Clearwater on August 19^th I had put 4,198 miles on the odometer at a cost of $497.94 in gas with milage at a great 28.25 miles per gallon.

Personally, I don’t think that is right but for now I will take it.

Now counting Florida at the start and end I was in 19 states and city’s such as Buffalo, Toronto, New Hampshire, Utica and Clearwater just to name a few and all not in Florida.

One stop I did make to visit my past was Lakeview, Ohio on Indian Lake, Ohio where up until 1962 I spent about two weeks each summer at the late grandfather cabin on the lake’s north shore.

To add to the above, I visited the local AM Vets Post 39 in Lakeview looking for someone whose life I saved back in 1957 or 1958.

Well on August 18^th at the post I met Mike Brown who I hadn’t seen since about 1958 or 1959, you see in August of 1957 Mike fell off the dock of his parent’s residence into the water and he couldn’t swim. Well, yours truly just reached down and saved his life by pulling him up onto the dock. Enough said on this for now.

Later on, the 18^th I left to come home because my step kids needed a few bucks to pay for my brides headstone so on the 19^th I returned to Clearwater, my home.

The trip was okay, but I wish Karen had been with me and it definitely would have taken longer because Karen would have noticed things, we both wanted to see more of. But that’s it, my trip for now.

As a note in closing Karen and I met on March 15, 1995 and married on April 26, 1997 that means we knew each other for 27-years, two months and two weeks and were married for 25-years, one month and one week. Way too short for me!